China: Punish Buyers of Poached Tiger Body Parts

In Zhanjiang, a city in China's Guangdong province, prominent business people and local officials have found a grotesque form of entertainment: watching tigers be electrocuted alive. These so-called "visual feasts" were followed by the tigers being butchered and fed to the attendees. Then the body parts were given as expensive gifts or sold on the black market.

The English-language website of the China News Service has reported 15 suspects have been arrested in a raid. One of the butchers responsible for the slaughter of at least 10 tigers jumped to his own death trying to evade arrest. The tiger trade is technically banned in China, and anyone convicted of poaching faces the death penalty.

Tiger bones and genitals are believed to contain medicinal properties in China, and tiger body parts and meat can sell for the equivalent of thousands of dollars per kilo. This black market industry is a major contributing factor to declining tiger populations worldwide. While the perpetrators of the butchery in Zhanjiang will be prosecuted, so too should anyone implicated in the participation of these grotesque displays, purchasers of these tiger products, and those who accept them as gifts.

Sign this petition to demand that China crack down on people who buy tiger products and watch their execution.

To the Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People's Republic of China:

We write to you after hearing news of the raid on a group electrocuting live tigers and then butchering them in Zhanjiang, Guangdong. We applaud the capture of the perpetrators of these heinous crimes. Media coverage on this story indicates that many prominent businesspeople and civil servants attended these tiger slaughters and partake in the illegal trade of the butchered parts. We ask that the Ministry help stem the slaughter of these endangered animals by also prosecuting those involved in the purchasing of these butchered tiger parts, as well as those who received the body parts as gifts.

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